(The Root) — It has been well established that black people love Twitter and ABC's Scandal. No one should be surprised, then, that Thursday night is a big night for live tweeting: It has been reported that Scandal fans (known as gladiators) send out more than 2,000 tweets per minute when new episodes air.

#Scandal and #AskScandal routinely make the top hashtags both on Twitter and on The Root's The Chatterati. The show's writers, producers and actors even get in on the action, watching and tweeting along with everyone else and answering viewer questions.

Scandal isn't the only show that engages so heavily with fans via social media, but it's one of the best examples of the changing ways that we watch television. The Nielsen Co., developer of one of the world's leading television ratings systems, recently announced the establishment of a social TV-rating system that will track and monitor Twitter TV activity.

That there is a need for such a rating system illustrates a groundbreaking shift in the way we consume and experience television. Shows like Scandal have raised the bar for television producers and their teams, who now have to make interacting with fans in cyberspace a priority.